Anybody who can't figure out how to log in as root on their Ubuntu box has no business doing it. They'll only break things they can't fix and then whine about how fragile Ubuntu is.
I think you're exactly right, and moreover that's exactly how it should be. There SHOULD be hundreds of distributions, all pulling in different directions. And most people probably shouldn't be running a Linux distribution on their desktop or notebook -- either the current version of Windows or Mac OSX will serve most users' needs better. The ones that should be using Linux will typically discover it on their own, and many of them will still go back to Windows or Mac.
Other than that, if I do a Google search (Google's back-end servers run Linux), am I using Linux? If I plug in and turn on a Linksys WRT54GS wireless router, am I using Linux? If I watch TV on my Tivo, am I using Linux? I'd say "yes" in all three cases. And in the case of the Tivo, I'm using it pretty directly -- navigating a UI on a Linux computer. If we really want to advocate Linux, maybe one thing we could be doing is letting people know they're already using it. Beyond that, there are some pretty narrow classes of users I would advise to install and run a Linux distribution:
1) I want to set up a bunch of Internet-browsing kiosks in my coffee shop. 2) I want to learn how my computer works and maybe do some programming. 3) I want a computer just for email and browsing the web, and I want you to take care of it for me remotely. 4) I want to set up some computers for my business, and I want them strictly limited to performing tasks X, Y and Z.
There are probably some others, but it's a rather limited group. Linux really shines on the server side or in the appliance arena. I don't see a compelling need to have a world of Linux-based desktop and notebook computers.
Not that I agree with Verizon (I don't), but Google offers such things as Google Video and Google Earth these days. You can definitely gobble up a lot of bandwidth just using Google services.
In the name of stopping piracy, there is a strong likelihood that the U.S. Federal Government will enact legislation closing the analog hole and mandating that EVERY device capable of playing media MUST enforce the license of that media.
There are plenty of Congress-critters who I wish they would close their anal log holes.
This is actually a good representation with some of the real problems with lyrics sites. The title of the song is actually "Strawberry Fields Forever". It was written by John Lennon (although commonly attributed to Lennon and Paul McCartney), not by The Beatles. The lyrics themselves look mostly right, but I'd be willing to bet that "'cos" should be "'cause" and "hung about" is two words. And that "I think I know..." line looks way off to me.
My point is not to play Grammar Nazi or Spelling Nazi on this post. My point is that copyrights serve to protect not only the revenue stream, but the integrity of the creative works as well. Lyrics sites tend to have even worse editorial control than Slashdot. People post all kinds of garbage, nobody checks for accuracy, and works are mis-attributed or not attributed at all. Yeah, you should have to seek permission to post somebody's artistic work, and not only that, but you should take care to reproduce it faithfully.
To me, the interesting thing about this is that it's newsworthy enough to publish on TheAge.com, and to discuss here. Kind of suggests that it's a "Man Bites Dog" situation, doesn't it?
The economy is not- but resources ARE. The earth is finite, it's impossible to have infinite resources in it.
Not infinite, no, but as plentiful as they have always been on the earth, and as plentiful as they are likely to be for a long time yet. Check out the Law of Conservation of Mass/Energy. What we consider a "resource" and what we consider "waste" fluctuates in response to supply and demand.
Prove it- do it. I've yet to see anybody become rich without making somebody else poor.
We'd have to define some terms to make progress here, but I can say I'm a good deal richer now than I was twenty years ago. Whom did I make poorer? Or looking at it from a macro point of view -- it seems to me the human race collectively has a whole lot more wealth now than when our ancestors climbed down from the trees, or out of the caves, or whatever they did. Since we all started with nothing, who got poorer?
True enough- if by "wealth" you mean the useless digits in federal reserve computers and not actual physical goods.
No, it does mean physical goods, or more precisely, the value added in creating physical goods (and delivering services). In other words, there is more wealth inherent in a computer than in its raw material components -- silicon, metal, plastic, etc.
Oh really? And where do you find the infinite resources for this bottomless pit of wealth of yours?
Doesn't have to be infinite. People aren't infinite either. There's roughly the same amount of raw material on the earth now as has always been here. Wealth comes from manipulating the raw material into useful things.
That reminds me... I have to go to the ATM machine to get some cash to buy a new NIC card. Then tomorrow I'll go to the La Brea Tar Pits, or maybe see the Los Angeles Angels game.
The remote voice quality was surprisingly bad in the Jedi Council conference room. You'd think if they had the technology and bandwidth to do holographic video, then surely the sound shouldn't be as thin and tinny as it was. Then again, it was long, long ago, wasn't it?
I've heard this argument a lot, but it's always bugged me. Are you saying it's okay to lock up a guy for 40 years without being "really certain" he's committed a crime? Is that sentence any more reversible? Sure you can let him out early if you find out he didn't do it (of course, nobody's looking very hard, because we're saving money, right?), but can you give him back the time he's served?
If I were falsely accused of murder, I'd want the prosecution to be seeking the death penalty. I'd want the high-priced defense, and the automatic appeals. I'd want people to think they have to be "really certain" before finding me guilty.
Well, that's partly right. True, there was only one vote which elected both offices, but it wasn't whoever "lost" that became VP, the two were never supposed to "work together" (the Veep was to preside over the Senate and to take over if the President was unable to continue in office -- not be an assistant to the President), and it never really "worked" for any President except maybe Washington.
The original design was that each elector got two votes, which had to be cast for two different people, at least one of which was not a resident of the elector's home state. The votes were not designated "President" or "Vice President", but the electors never doubted which was which. Both the President and Vice President had to be elected by a majority of the whole number of electors -- it was never the "loser" that became Vice President.
In 1796, John Adams was elected President and Thomas Jefferson was elected Vice President. Political parties (the Federalists and the Anti-Federalists, later Republicans) were still in their infancy, and the Federalists didn't have the discipline to choose a "compatable" VP for Adams. Jefferson soon went back to Monticello and "served" most of his term from there.
In 1800 the result was even worse. The Republicans did have the discipline to control their electors, but they did it too well -- Jefferson ended up tied with Aaron Burr (though there was never any real doubt that it was Jefferson who was supposed to be President) and the election had to be decided in the House of Representatives. Shortly after that, the 12th Amendment mandated separate ballots for President and Vice President.
Bill Gates already was rich when he was born. He has a "the third" in his name for crying out loud.
Those don't cost nearly as much as you might think they do. My nephew has a IV after his name, and his son has a V. He didn't even have to take out a mortgage for those.
Interviewer "Have you ever been investigated for terrorist activites?"
That's an illegal interview question in the US. An interviewer can ask if you've been convicted of a particular crime, as long as it's reasonably related to the job in question, but cannot ask whether you've been arrested, investigated, questioned, indicted, etc.
He didn't count the time it took for him to leave his office and drive to the library. So add another 20 minutes to all of the library times.
But that's a feature, not a bug. On the way to the library, you have time to realize that you don't care what books Piers Morgan wrote, or how much of the Slovenian railway is electrified, and you can take a walk in the park, visit a friend, do some window shopping, or see a movie instead. If you Google for the answer, you'll run across a bunch of "interesting" links that aren't quite on point, but spark your curiosity, and you'll spend all day indoors, websurfing.
Slashdot Mirror
Anybody who can't figure out how to log in as root on their Ubuntu box has no business doing it. They'll only break things they can't fix and then whine about how fragile Ubuntu is.
I think you're exactly right, and moreover that's exactly how it should be. There SHOULD be hundreds of distributions, all pulling in different directions. And most people probably shouldn't be running a Linux distribution on their desktop or notebook -- either the current version of Windows or Mac OSX will serve most users' needs better. The ones that should be using Linux will typically discover it on their own, and many of them will still go back to Windows or Mac.
Other than that, if I do a Google search (Google's back-end servers run Linux), am I using Linux? If I plug in and turn on a Linksys WRT54GS wireless router, am I using Linux? If I watch TV on my Tivo, am I using Linux? I'd say "yes" in all three cases. And in the case of the Tivo, I'm using it pretty directly -- navigating a UI on a Linux computer. If we really want to advocate Linux, maybe one thing we could be doing is letting people know they're already using it. Beyond that, there are some pretty narrow classes of users I would advise to install and run a Linux distribution:
1) I want to set up a bunch of Internet-browsing kiosks in my coffee shop.
2) I want to learn how my computer works and maybe do some programming.
3) I want a computer just for email and browsing the web, and I want you to take care of it for me remotely.
4) I want to set up some computers for my business, and I want them strictly limited to performing tasks X, Y and Z.
There are probably some others, but it's a rather limited group. Linux really shines on the server side or in the appliance arena. I don't see a compelling need to have a world of Linux-based desktop and notebook computers.
Suppose you put a mat that says WELCOME in front of your front door. Does that really mean that anybody who wants is allowed to come in?
If "hitotsu, futatsu, mittsu..." is a different series of numbers, then so is "first, second, third..." right?
Not that I agree with Verizon (I don't), but Google offers such things as Google Video and Google Earth these days. You can definitely gobble up a lot of bandwidth just using Google services.
There are plenty of Congress-critters who I wish they would close their anal log holes.
This is actually a good representation with some of the real problems with lyrics sites. The title of the song is actually "Strawberry Fields Forever". It was written by John Lennon (although commonly attributed to Lennon and Paul McCartney), not by The Beatles. The lyrics themselves look mostly right, but I'd be willing to bet that "'cos" should be "'cause" and "hung about" is two words. And that "I think I know..." line looks way off to me.
My point is not to play Grammar Nazi or Spelling Nazi on this post. My point is that copyrights serve to protect not only the revenue stream, but the integrity of the creative works as well. Lyrics sites tend to have even worse editorial control than Slashdot. People post all kinds of garbage, nobody checks for accuracy, and works are mis-attributed or not attributed at all. Yeah, you should have to seek permission to post somebody's artistic work, and not only that, but you should take care to reproduce it faithfully.
We've only had movable type printing presses for less than 600 years, and we've had copyright law nearly as long.
Altho I am shocked at the lack of Scottish dishes at McDonalds. I felt betrayed.
When they introduce Haggis McNuggets, you'll realize that "betrayed" isn't the worst way to feel.
To me, the interesting thing about this is that it's newsworthy enough to publish on TheAge.com, and to discuss here. Kind of suggests that it's a "Man Bites Dog" situation, doesn't it?
On the plus side of the equation, there was nobody in the film that one could claim was actually wasted on such a project.
What about Dennis Hopper? But as bad as Waterworld was, it didn't keep Costner from making the even-more-unwatchable The Postman two years later.
Not infinite, no, but as plentiful as they have always been on the earth, and as plentiful as they are likely to be for a long time yet. Check out the Law of Conservation of Mass/Energy. What we consider a "resource" and what we consider "waste" fluctuates in response to supply and demand.
Prove it- do it. I've yet to see anybody become rich without making somebody else poor.
We'd have to define some terms to make progress here, but I can say I'm a good deal richer now than I was twenty years ago. Whom did I make poorer? Or looking at it from a macro point of view -- it seems to me the human race collectively has a whole lot more wealth now than when our ancestors climbed down from the trees, or out of the caves, or whatever they did. Since we all started with nothing, who got poorer?
True enough- if by "wealth" you mean the useless digits in federal reserve computers and not actual physical goods.
No, it does mean physical goods, or more precisely, the value added in creating physical goods (and delivering services). In other words, there is more wealth inherent in a computer than in its raw material components -- silicon, metal, plastic, etc.
Oh really? And where do you find the infinite resources for this bottomless pit of wealth of yours?
Doesn't have to be infinite. People aren't infinite either. There's roughly the same amount of raw material on the earth now as has always been here. Wealth comes from manipulating the raw material into useful things.
That reminds me... I have to go to the ATM machine to get some cash to buy a new NIC card. Then tomorrow I'll go to the La Brea Tar Pits, or maybe see the Los Angeles Angels game.
If a house has a big mat that says "WELCOME" on the front porch, do you still need permission to open the door and walk in?
Actually, 6 is the perfect number -- not 7.
The remote voice quality was surprisingly bad in the Jedi Council conference room. You'd think if they had the technology and bandwidth to do holographic video, then surely the sound shouldn't be as thin and tinny as it was. Then again, it was long, long ago, wasn't it?
Oh yeah? And which government agency forced you to type that?
I've heard this argument a lot, but it's always bugged me. Are you saying it's okay to lock up a guy for 40 years without being "really certain" he's committed a crime? Is that sentence any more reversible? Sure you can let him out early if you find out he didn't do it (of course, nobody's looking very hard, because we're saving money, right?), but can you give him back the time he's served?
If I were falsely accused of murder, I'd want the prosecution to be seeking the death penalty. I'd want the high-priced defense, and the automatic appeals. I'd want people to think they have to be "really certain" before finding me guilty.
Well, that's partly right. True, there was only one vote which elected both offices, but it wasn't whoever "lost" that became VP, the two were never supposed to "work together" (the Veep was to preside over the Senate and to take over if the President was unable to continue in office -- not be an assistant to the President), and it never really "worked" for any President except maybe Washington.
The original design was that each elector got two votes, which had to be cast for two different people, at least one of which was not a resident of the elector's home state. The votes were not designated "President" or "Vice President", but the electors never doubted which was which. Both the President and Vice President had to be elected by a majority of the whole number of electors -- it was never the "loser" that became Vice President.
In 1796, John Adams was elected President and Thomas Jefferson was elected Vice President. Political parties (the Federalists and the Anti-Federalists, later Republicans) were still in their infancy, and the Federalists didn't have the discipline to choose a "compatable" VP for Adams. Jefferson soon went back to Monticello and "served" most of his term from there.
In 1800 the result was even worse. The Republicans did have the discipline to control their electors, but they did it too well -- Jefferson ended up tied with Aaron Burr (though there was never any real doubt that it was Jefferson who was supposed to be President) and the election had to be decided in the House of Representatives. Shortly after that, the 12th Amendment mandated separate ballots for President and Vice President.
I like this combination of two proposed answers:
Q. Why is a raven like a writing desk?
A. Because there's an O in both, an R in neither, and each begins with an E.
(Think about it.)
Those don't cost nearly as much as you might think they do. My nephew has a IV after his name, and his son has a V. He didn't even have to take out a mortgage for those.
Wow, that's a neat trick -- Rick Boucher has turned himself into two Congressmen?
Shouldn't it be just "Fire"?
That's an illegal interview question in the US. An interviewer can ask if you've been convicted of a particular crime, as long as it's reasonably related to the job in question, but cannot ask whether you've been arrested, investigated, questioned, indicted, etc.
But that's a feature, not a bug. On the way to the library, you have time to realize that you don't care what books Piers Morgan wrote, or how much of the Slovenian railway is electrified, and you can take a walk in the park, visit a friend, do some window shopping, or see a movie instead. If you Google for the answer, you'll run across a bunch of "interesting" links that aren't quite on point, but spark your curiosity, and you'll spend all day indoors, websurfing.